The crumbling Gardiner Expy. is going to get a rough ride at city council in the new year.

Councillors will slug it out in January over the future of the elevated highway as the debate to tear down the eastern extremity of the Gardiner once again heats up.

Left-leaning councillors vowed to push council in January to hit the gas on the abandoned study of whether the section of the expressway east of Jarvis St. could be removed.

The debate comes amid fresh revelations that stretch of the Gardiner is six years away from being unusable.

Councillors were clawing at each other Wednesday over who to blame for the road’s current condition and who cancelled the environmental assessment that would have put a price tag on the cost of scrapping part of the highway.

Mayor Rob Ford’s allies on council blamed former mayor David Miller’s administration for ignoring the expressway while Millerites blamed the Ford regime for pushing staff to nix the study looking at future options for the Gardiner two years ago.

Waterfront Toronto spent around $3 million on the environmental assessment (EA) before putting the $7 million study on hold in 2010 and spending the remaining $4 million on other priority projects.

The budget committee on Wednesday approved the spending of $505 million on repairing the highway over the next 10 years.

Council would still have to approve the Gardiner repairs as part of the 2013 budget at a meeting in January and that sets City Hall on the road to a new debate over the future of the downtown expressway.

Councillor Gord Perks said he will push for the environmental assessment being revived at that January council meeting on the 2013 budget. Perks stressed council has made no decision to stop the EA so it never should have been halted.

“Just like when the mayor cancelled Transit City ... this decision was not made by council and it is going to cost us a lot of money and it is going to cost us a lot of time,” he said.

Perks said the EA would give the city the “best advice” on whether it makes sense to take down the eastern section of the Gardiner or spend millions every year to keep it from falling down.

Public Works committee Chairman Denzil Minnan-Wong dismissed any move to tear down the Gardiner calling it cost prohibitive.

“The traffic delays will be more significant,” he said. “And then there is all that money that you’re going to have to flush down a toilet while you wait five, six, seven years for an EA.”